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Thursday, August 20, 2015

This past Sunday in Chicago, comedian and long suit enthusiast Steve Harvey held a taping for a two-hour special of his eponymous daytime program. The theme of the show was "What Men Really Think," and to that end, Harvey packed 2,000 dudes into a theatre downtown. And those men, according to several attendees, did their jobs, calling female guests bitches, hounding them with catcalls, howls, and whistles, and lobbing homophobic slurs at one man in the audience.
On Facebook, one Chicago comedian named Tim Dunn described what he saw during the 10-hour, two-part taping. The show was apparently spun to the men in attendance as a sort of male-only summit on dating and relationships. (Before coming, the audience members were asked to answer a 53-question survey via email.) But when the taping started, Harvey revealed to the audience that there would actually be hundreds of women onstage, too. This turned out to be a bad idea. From Dunn's Facebook post:

- Over a hundred women were seated onstage, and when they got up to speak they were catcalled. This resulted in the warm-up comic asking the men to stop catcalling, as the vibe in the room had become "too rapey."
- When women skyped in to ask Steve for advice, their image was displayed on large screens, which men would either catcall or groan at based on the women's looks. And like, if you looked at the guys groaning, spending a night with any of these women would be the absolute best night of their lives.
- During a segment about how often men want sex, a young man got up and mentioned that he is sometimes too tired from work to have sex with his girlfriend. He was immediately booed and had homophobic epithets yelled at him.
- During the same segment, a woman got up and described a time when she didn't want to have sex because she had just finished a tiring road trip. In that time, she was first catcalled, then booed, ending with a man yelling "you haven't done your duty!" in response to her story.
- To end that segment, Steve said it should be the woman's decision whether or not to have sex. Only the women onstage, the comedians in our row, and a few other men throughout the theater applauded that statement.

All of these stories were echoed on a podcast composed of other local comedians in Chicago, hosted by one named Sammy Tamimi, who tipped me off to this story. On Tamimi's podcast, Bryan Duff and Tyler Samples describe men in the audience essentially claiming some of the women on-stage—"I call the one in yellow!"—screaming things like "you bitch," describing a woman who appeared via Skype as a "pump it and dump it," and yelling "pussy" and homophobic slurs at the aforementioned man who said he was sometimes too tired to have sex.

To be clear, Duff and Samples aren't exactly heroes here. During the podcast, Duff talks about going to the taping as a character called "Rape Culture" and—as he tells it, unintentionally—inciting the crowd by acting out misogyny while "in character." In imitating the men in the crowd, they also slip into voices in which they are obviously referring to black men. (That said, photos from the taping make the crowd look relatively diverse.) They also argue that one ostensibly straight warm-up comic was actually in the closet, and went on to parody his effeminate voice.

Nonetheless, both the Facebook and podcast accounts seem to argue that Steve Harvey, in his quest to show "what men really think," got a little more truth than he might have wanted. Duff and Samples also noted that warm-up comic Rubin Ervin told the crowd it was getting too "rapey," and say that they saw one woman on-stage try and tug the bottom of her skirt down in response to the catcalls.
Harvey, they say, did not exactly help matters. Per Duff and Samples, Harvey at one point threatened to fight someone in the audience who was complaining that the crowd hadn't been fed. As far as his on-topic moderating went, they say Harvey frequently returned to the concept of men as hunters and women as prey, as well as the idea that women can be "meat" or "traps." None of that is exactly especially regressive amongst the general population of straight men, except Harvey is a New York Times best-selling relationship author several times over. His book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy and Commitment was used as the fulcrum of the 2012 film Think Like a Man, as well as its sequel Think Like a Man Too, both of which have been criticized previously for turning back the clock on

It's not clear yet when the two-part special will air, or if the show's editors will choose to, or be able to, edit out audience members yelling "bitch" at female speakers or audibly and loudly groaning at women who they didn't collectively find attractive. Steve Harvey is a syndicated show distributed by NBC Universal.

If you were at the taping and would like to relay your experience, feel free to email me.Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

The people we elect aren't the ones calling the shots, says Tufts University's Michael Glennon

istock/photo illustration by lesley becker/globe staff

By Jordan Michael Smith October 19, 2014

The voters who put Barack Obama in office expected some big changes. From the NSA's warrant-less wiretapping to Guantanamo Bay to the Patriot Act, candidate Obama was a defender of civil liberties and privacy, promising a dramatically different approach from his predecessor.

But six years into his administration, the Obama version of national security looks almost indistinguishable from the one he inherited. Guantanamo Bay remains open. The NSA has, if anything, become more aggressive in monitoring Americans. Drone strikes have escalated. Most recently it was reported that the same president who won a Nobel Prize in part for promoting nuclear disarmament is spending up to $1 trillion modernizing and revitalizing America's nuclear weapons.
Why did the face in the Oval Office change but the policies remain the same? Critics tend to focus on Obama himself, a leader who perhaps has shifted with politics to take a harder line. But Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldn't have changed policies much even if he tried.

Though it's a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, "National Security and Double Government," he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term "double government": There's the one we elect, and then there's the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.
Glennon cites the example of Obama and his team being shocked and angry to discover upon taking office that the military gave them only two options for the war in Afghanistan: The United States could add more troops, or the United States could add a lot more troops. Hemmed in, Obama added 30,000 more troops.

Glennon's critique sounds like an outsider's take, even a radical one. In fact, he is the quintessential insider: He was legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a consultant to various congressional committees, as well as to the State Department. "National Security and Double Government" comes favorably blurbed by former members of the Defense Department, State Department, White House, and even the CIA. And he's not a conspiracy theorist: Rather, he sees the problem as one of "smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives"—without any meaningful oversight to rein them in.
How exactly has double government taken hold? And what can be done about it? Glennon spoke with Ideas from his office at Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. This interview has been condensed and edited.

IDEAS: Where does the term "double government" come from?GLENNON:It comes from Walter Bagehot's famous theory, unveiled in the 1860s. Bagehot was the scholar who presided over the birth of the Economist magazine—they still have a column named after him. Bagehot tried to explain in his book "The English Constitution" how the British government worked. He suggested that there are two sets of institutions. There are the "dignified institutions," the monarchy and the House of Lords, which people erroneously believed ran the government. But he suggested that there was in reality a second set of institutions, which he referred to as the "efficient institutions," that actually set governmental policy. And those were the House of Commons, the prime minister, and the British cabinet.IDEAS: What evidence exists for saying America has a double government?GLENNON:I was curious why a president such as Barack Obama would embrace the very same national security and counterterrorism policies that he campaigned eloquently against. Why would that president continue those same policies in case after case after case? I initially wrote it based on my own experience and personal knowledge and conversations with dozens of individuals in the military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies of our government, as well as, of course, officeholders on Capitol Hill and in the courts. And the documented evidence in the book is substantial—there are 800 footnotes in the book.IDEAS: Why would policy makers hand over the national-security keys to unelected officials?GLENNON: It hasn't been a conscious decision....Members of Congress are generalists and need to defer to experts within the national security realm, as elsewhere. They are particularly concerned about being caught out on a limb having made a wrong judgment about national security and tend, therefore, to defer to experts, who tend to exaggerate threats. The courts similarly tend to defer to the expertise of the network that defines national security policy.
The presidency itself is not a top-down institution, as many people in the public believe, headed by a president who gives orders and causes the bureaucracy to click its heels and salute. National security policy actually bubbles up from within the bureaucracy. Many of the more controversial policies, from the mining of Nicaragua's harbors to the NSA surveillance program, originated within the bureaucracy. John Kerry was not exaggerating when he said that some of those programs are "on autopilot." IDEAS: Isn't this just another way of saying that big bureaucracies are difficult to change?GLENNON: It's much more serious than that. These particular bureaucracies don't set truck widths or determine railroad freight rates. They make nerve-center security decisions that in a democracy can be irreversible, that can close down the marketplace of ideas, and can result in some very dire consequences.IDEAS: Couldn't Obama's national-security decisions just result from the difference in vantage point between being a campaigner and being the commander-in-chief, responsible for 320 million lives?GLENNON: There is an element of what you described. There is not only one explanation or one cause for the amazing continuity of American national security policy. But obviously there is something else going on when policy after policy after policy all continue virtually the same way that they were in the George W. Bush administration.IDEAS: This isn't how we're taught to think of the American political system.GLENNON: I think the American people are deluded, as Bagehot explained about the British population, that the institutions that provide the public face actually set American national security policy. They believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change. Now, there are many counter-examples in which these branches do affect policy, as Bagehot predicted there would be. But the larger picture is still true—policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions.IDEAS: Do we have any hope of fixing the problem?GLENNON: The ultimate problem is the pervasive political ignorance on the part of the American people. And indifference to the threat that is emerging from these concealed institutions. That is where the energy for reform has to come from: the American people. Not from government. Government is very much the problem here. The people have to take the bull by the horns. And that's a very difficult thing to do, because the ignorance is in many ways rational. There is very little profit to be had in learning about, and being active about, problems that you can't affect, policies that you can't change.

Jordan Michael Smith is a contributing writer at Salon and The Christian Science Monitor.

Hail Satan Your Own Way

Satanists are nonconformists. We all know that. So when most of us think “Satanic music,” we think of Satanic death metal. However, there are quite a few musicians that Hail Satan in a different way.

Satanism is based on individualism, epicureanism, and an “eye for an eye” morality. So it just stands to reason that a lot of Satanic bands don’t follow the leader when it comes to what it means to play music influenced by Satan.

The High Priest of the church of Satan, Magus Peter H. Gilmore studied music at NYU and holds a B.S. and M.A. degree in composition. He listens exclusively to classical music and film scores. He is most intrigued by the work of Mahler, Bruckner, Shostakovich, Vaughan Williams, Brahms, Sibelius and Beethoven.

The above maestros influence what he composes.

His works are piano, voice, instrumental ensembles—some of which he has realized with synthesizers and samplers. Gilmore has also done purely electronically realized pieces with early patch-bay arrays which challenge one to create original sounds from scratch.

When asked how Satanism influences his music Gilmore replied:

“Satanism is a philosophy that encourages one’s pursuit of excellence through one’s passions and it embraces the full range of human emotion. Music is an art form that captures that panorama of feelings with exquisite flexibility and nuance—the tenderest of intimate gestures, contemplative rumination, fury, tragedy, mockery, heaven-shattering bombastic peals of victory, and so many more. And some music has a complexity of form which can equal in beauty exquisite works of architecture. I see music as an essential expression of what we Satanists call ‘vital existence’—living life to the fullest by exploring our human nature and celebrating our unique selves in the process.”

Nathan Gray sings for both BOYSETSFIRE, and I AM HERESY.

BOYSETSFIRE has been a band for 20 years now, and are currently playing anniversary shows in Europe and the US. Although Gray personally is an active member of the Church of Satan, no one else in the band is. In fact, the belief systems within the band are incredibly diverse.

Gray says, “I have always maintained, that Satanism is a very personal ideology that asserts itself when necessary, but mostly calls for its members to mind their own business. This of course makes it very easy to get along with others that stick to the same viewpoint. Seeing as Satanism praises earthly gain and success (unlike other religions that call for a humble and contrite nature on earth, in order to build treasure in heaven), being in a band like BSF, and ‘paying the bills’ so to speak through my art, is incredibly Satanic in and of itself. As I have said many times before, ‘Get a job, pay your bills, and live a life of true independence…Then you can speak to me of the imagery, symbolism, and archetypes of Satanic philosophy.’

“I AM HERESY is a newer project born to invoke the pageantry of Satanic archetypes and imagery. I wanted to form a band that was more outwardly ritualistic, and open about the symbolism that moves me. Self deification, ritual and greater magic, symbolically summoning demons, and calling out the theistic and ‘white light’ hypocrisy, of those religions that would define our basic and natural urges as ‘sinful.’ This band, as well as my upcoming solo material are a tribute to the atheistic religion, and indulgent ideology that defines who I am.”

Gyps Fulvus incorporates elements of Electronica, Industrial Metal, 20th Century Classical music from the Expressionist period, Drum ‘n Bass, Breakbeat, and film scores of the Horror, Thriller, and Sci-Fi genre.

So what does that mean exactly?

“I’ve made it a consorted effort to avoid the mindset of creating “Satanic music.” Rather, I’ve set out to make a cacophonous concoction of music that relies heavily on dissonance, chord clashing, and various tonal structures that are out of the parameters of Popular music. Each of my albums has something different to offer, while fully retaining the consistent Horror influence intact.

“I compose music designed to raise unsettling emotions and feelings within listeners. I gain my inspiration by tapping into the most disturbing aspects of my very own psyche, and expelling it forth into musical form. I incorporate a diverse number of themes and ideas into my works, all of which are related to fear, phobias, existential angst, and the darker side of the human animal.”

The Quintessentials is a fusion of Horror Punk and early ’90s Pop-Punk with a sound somewhere between the Misfits, Screeching Weasel and the Ramones, with just a splash of old school Black Metal thrown in. The band was founded by former member of The Catalogs and Church of Satan Warlock, Les Hernandez in 1998, and continues strong to this day.

Les Hernandez (lead singer, backup vocals, and lead guitar) says “I founded this band to push back against the idea that Metal bands somehow own the Satanism tag, and to get genuine Satanic principles and ideas represented in music, rather than the overused and paranoid ideas of devil worship that Metal bands were perpetuating, which all came from Christian paranoia and ignorance. Satanism, which promotes individuality, self-sufficiency, pride, and not blindly bowing to herd conformity, has a lot in common with the ideals of early Punk from the late 1970s and early ’80s–and being a fan of that music, it only seemed right to put the two together. Of course, Satanism isn’t the only thing we sing about, with other songs about my favorite Horror films and tongue-in-cheek tunes simply because they’re fun.”

Jeremiah Crow does creepy music for creepy folks. He says, “Jeremiah Crow’s Insufferable One Man Show is an exploration of all things nostalgic for me as a youngin’ growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania. Minus the bucktoothed hicks, bib overalls, and cow tipping, the haunted memories of the backwoods are essential to this project. My early experiences discovering abandoned farm houses, dense forests, and mysterious sounds in the middle of the night, play an integral role in creating these songs of sorrow and tales of horror. My Insufferable One Man Show is also paying homage to the tradition of dark roots music. I make good use of the banjo, musical saw, and washboard.

“Despite the fear based and irrational stereotypes of Satanism, I’ve found others who adhere to this religion are often creative, productive, honest, witty, rather good looking, and dedicated to the discovery of all the best things in life. I feel this is where my music fits in, and this is what Satanism means to me.”

Darren Deicide plays the blues, “Satanism has influenced my music deeply, but mostly on a subtler level. My lyrics aren’t about Satanism, per se. However, my music is squarely in the blues idiom, a style of music that has always been associated with the dark arts. It’s a tradition that I embrace. True to form also, the masters of the blues were often thought to be in communication with the devil and some were accused of having Faustian pacts to gain their skill. Satanism has pushed me, like these classic blues artists, to reach for higher levels of mastery. Paradoxically though, I do look to pioneer new territories of the genre. One valuable lesson Satanism taught me, that I think more people could benefit from learning, is that there is value in being original. We live in a society where homogeneity is extolled as the highest value, and with the globalization of capital and technology, I think that is accelerating exponentially. Humanity has created a monoculture, one that discourages uniqueness.”

A huge part of the reason that people are very excited about the possibility of a Deadwood reunion movie is that it would allow them to spend some more time with Ian McShane's Al Swearengen character — one of the most fascinating and multi-layered figures in TV history. In real-life, Swearengen was a brothel owner/entrepreneur/thug who was equally feared for his brutality and respected for his business savvy. But while he was ostensibly the villain of the HBO series (which you can stream on HBO NOW), the show's writing staff portrayed him as being much more complicated than just a mustache-twirling antagonist. McShane infused the character with almost a quiet nobility, making Swearengen someone who committed deplorable acts at times, but who was also capable of surprising kindness. He also got the series' best lines. So, join us as we travel back in time to the South Dakota frontier as we take a look back at the best Al Swearengen quotes from Deadwood.

"Welcome to f*cking Deadwood!" – Al Swearengen

Shouting those four words while beaten and bloody, Al sums up Deadwood as a show — it's a brutal and profane place. And so worth visiting.

"Pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair or f*cking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man… and give some back." – Al Swearengen

Bizarrely enough, sometimes Swearengen acted as the show's moral compass, such as in this speech to world-weary newspaper man Merrick (Jeffrey Jones). If you ask me, HBO needs to capitalize on a golden merchandising opportunity and release a series of prints featuring inspiration quotes from Al.

"In life, you have to do a lot of things you don't f*cking want to do. Many times, that's what the f*ck life is… one vile f*cking task after another." – Al Swearengen

Not only was he an excellent pimp, Swearengen was one hell of a life coach. Who knew they even had those in the 1800s?

It's a shame that the Internet didn't exist in the time of Deadwood, because something tells me that Al would be absolutely fierce at writing TV recaps.

"No one gets out alive, Doc." – Al Swearengen

In some ways, Swearengen is a tragic figure. He spends all of his days working, trying to build his whole dubious empire, knowing all the while that because of his environment and line of work that his life could end at any second. But there is no "carpe diem" positivity to be found here, just the cold realization that death is always lurking around the corner. Bummer.

"Announcing your plans is a good way to hear God laugh." – Al Swearengen

The writers of Deadwood didn't invent this idiom, but they did realize that it perfectly suits the world-weariness of the Swearengen character. Speaking of which…

"Every f*ckin' beatin', I'm grateful for. Every f*ckin' one of them. Get all the trust beat out of you. And you know what the f*ckin' world is." – Al Swearengen

There's no better way to wrap up this collection of Al Swearengen quotes than with this statement that sums up his ideology that the world is a kill or be killed place, and, as the show's tagline succinctly stated, Deadwood is a hell of a place to make your fortune.

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About Me

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain...and like all living things, waste away...

I am a shooter and so much more...I see the shot in the camera extending the intended vision and how we'll use it in the final cut, who will see it, why and how, so much goes into the whole and I see it.... I am more than the equipment and I am more than the shooter that guy with the camera on his shoulder, the camera in hand...

On the most basic level I put a camera to my eye, be it digital or film, press the shutter and record...

But I do so much more...just cause it's so much fun to learn all there is...method of record/capture, edit/composite to convey the message, the story there it's always to tell...

Sometimes I think, have I learned all I need... A moment, later I think not...and find more to learn, to apply what I have already learned to new work...

Living & working in the San Francisco Bay area where I'm working and exploring life as a Project Manager long versed in Producing, Shooting, Editing for Broadcast and Webcast and many forms of development and presentation...

Freelancing as well for ECG as a web-cast engineer / lighting-cameraperson and VTS applying my extensive knowledge of camera operation and production...

Recently on staff with Nasdaq as Multimedia Project Manager in The San Francisco Bay Area... Producing and managing aspects of webcast production and technical event management, including multimedia production and post-production, camera, lighting, staging, sound, streaming, presentation services and software, projection, rigging, for Nasdaq's Corporate Solutions clients.

Prior to Nasdaq I was with Thomson/Reuters in New York as a Technical Director, directing, recording and transmitting the production of live & prerecorded news coverage of global economic events, presented on Thomson Reuters web based platform, Insider as well as ReutersTV. Contracted with Talkpoint as a Field Streaming Producer & Production Manager handling a variety of audio & video webcasts and production coordination.

Prior to Thomson/Reuters & Talkpoint, I spent over a decade contracted as Director of Photography for three facilities designing, producing and shooting live action and photographic elements for broadcast, cable, webcast & corporate documentaries and specials, news, commercials. I was also Director of Photography, Producer & Editor for Moe Greene, a subsidiary of The Creative Group, developing specials & series content created in the development of FangoriaTV, a startup cable television horror channel & content provider. In addition, I was Director of Photography on various live action projects for Broadcast, DVD and the Internet, which included a Professional Boxing pilot for boxing promoter Main Event Boxing, a PBS documentary on the life of jazz photographer Bill Gottlieb, and small market documentaries for St. Johns University & Showtime